The present invention relates to data processing by digital computer, and more particularly to extending a standard application.
Customers of a standard software application may need to extend the standard application to add customer-specific features that are not implemented by the standard application. In addition, customers of the standard application may also need to customize the features of the standard application by providing customer-specific extensions for the features implemented by the standard application. There are many different approaches for providing customer-specific application extensions. For example, SAP R/3, available from SAP AG of Walldorf (Baden) Germany, supports customer-specific extensions by defining Business Transaction Events, User Exit, Business Add-In, and Append methods.
Customers can enhance a standard application by implementing a number of individual atomic extensions. Each atomic extension generally implements an isolated customer-specific feature. A particular extension scenario may require the implementation of several atomic extensions in order to provide the desired enhancement. Atomic extensions that belong to the same extension scenario may need to be maintained and upgraded at the same time. Also, several different extension scenarios may share one or more atomic extensions.